


flames of mystery; park.

by arrowthroughtheheart



Series: we're making history. [3]
Category: BLACKPINK (Band), Day6 (Band), EXO (Band), LOONA (Korea Band), Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Tragedy, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Fire, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inspired by Buzzfeed Unsolved, Kidnapping, LITERALLY, Murder Mystery, Oop, Panic Attacks, a remade fic, bc their family name, but then, im sorry jae ily i swear, jaehyung tries his best as a big bro, lowkey just me tryna be funny, no beta we die like men, they're all siblings here somehow, we die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24439132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arrowthroughtheheart/pseuds/arrowthroughtheheart
Summary: Park Jaehyung was fourteen, his hair as shiny as the sun that was reflected on his jet-black locks. He’s older than Chanyeol by a few months, but it was only because of some poorly-developed technology their local midwife had in recognizing the fact that there were twins instead of one big, gigantic baby, though the two did end up as the tallest ones among their entire family. Nobody knew how Chanyeol managed to survive in the womb for almost three weeks without being noticed after Jaehyung came out of the womb, but he did, and he followed suit right after the midwifes found out that whatever was inside Mrs. Park’s womb was not a tumour.
Relationships: Everyone/Everyone
Series: we're making history. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1373290
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	flames of mystery; park.

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: This work is inspired by the mysterious case of the Sodder children, which I am very aware is a very real thing that happened and affected a lot of people, and this work is not made to mock, invalidate, or disrespect the accident neither will I ever hope for these kinds of things to happen to anyone. I might not know the entire detail and tweaked a lot of things, forgive me if this work is an unpleasant experience for you.  
> .  
> .  
> p.s: i found out about this story a few years ago from Buzzfeed Unsolved, got inspired to write a very short, straight to the point story, and figured that I would remake it today. enjoy.  
> p.s(x2): if you're not into me mixing up everyone from a lot of groups together, I am even more sorry.

Before the knocking on their door was heard, Chaeryeong noted the fact that there’s a constant sound of bickering outside. Nothing she isn’t used to hearing, since the neighbors are loud and they majorly enjoy heated conversations with people they live nearby, but it’s never been this close to their door before. Her family does have a fence around their property, though it’s perhaps broken from the storm that washed over just a few hours ago, before the break of dawn. Maybe they’re just fussing over how much the storm broke, and if that was the case, Chaeryeong wouldn’t have the need to rush all the way down to open the door after a little  _ ding-dong  _ was followed with an impatient knock.

She pushes the creaking door open with the side of her elbow, taking in the figure of two middle-aged men standing by them, hats set aside on their arms. They look friendly enough to pass as the local police, hence the formal attire, but the small town Chaeryeong and her family resides in don’t usually allow a non-uniform to be worn during working days. At least, that’s what her father used to say. Then again, maybe times  _ have  _ changed.

The sixteen year old nods, making sure her smile reaches her eyes before she puts in all her might to finally get the door open wide enough for the men to come in if ever needed. “Good morning?” she says, half-humming. “Good morning, Miss. Pardon our intrusion, but is this the house of Mister Park Chanyeol? I’m his. . . co-worker, and I’ve been here a few years ago but I’m afraid that there’s been so many changes that I’d make a mistake?” one of the men asks, closing one of his hands above the other in a polite manner. Chaeryeong spared him a glance before she stares back at the living room where the man they were looking for is sitting, quiet as if meditating. “Co-worker?” she asks again, curious.

“Ah, so it is his house,” the man that spoke sighed, glad. Turning to his friend, who shared nothing in common with his cheery and brighter manners, he chuckled. “We’re the detectives that were working with Mister Park a few years ago on the unsolved case of the Park children. We’ve found another lead a few hours ago, since the thunderstorm swept a lot of things away but also brought back to light things that were once hidden!” he continues, chirping like an over-excited cartoon character.

_ The Park children?  _

Chaeryeong lets her mouth form a little ‘o’, acting as if she was surprised. Her entire bloodline revolved around this mystery, this unsolved case that has been brought up time and time again and will probably will be passed down to centuries after she meets her own demise, simply since the Park family is so hard-headed and would simply refuse to believe that the half of their first generation kids either died in a fire or were kidnapped. She wouldn’t blame them, though, for wanting justice. 

“Are you sure Park Chanyeol agreed to have a conversation with you?” She tries one last time, hoping that the key to having peace once in her lifetime is the free-will of her never-endingly passionate father. The men laughed, eyeing her as if she’d just said something weird. Frankly, it made her want to throw the bucket she’s tucked underneath her right arm on his face, drenching him in the dirty water, since who told this random man that he’s allowed to laugh at her like that? 

“Absolutely, young lady,” the man tipped his hat, “he’s the one who summoned us here last night, telling him to check in on the case once again. Caught a ‘bad feeling’, he said, and apparently,” he lifted the case he’s been holding the entire time, “he was right!”

Chaeryeong stops herself from sighing at this, stepping away from the door. 

“Come in,” she invites them, “father’s sitting by himself in the living room. Please don’t be too loud, though. My mother just recently got in bed. You wouldn’t want to wake her up.”

She’s curious.

Rightfully so, since Chanyeol has never been the kind of father who would just openly share his life with his children, especially since it’s compiled mostly of tragedies upon tragedies. Chaeryeong got the gist of it, the entire Park children situation; after she sneaked into her father’s room a few years ago and scared herself to death for a good few months after since Chanyeol’s description of the entire situation was very eerily detailed and laced with the pain and betrayal he’s felt throughout his entire life. Rightfully so, Chaeryeong thinks, but she’s never got to finish reading the journals that her father wrote since he’s never been gone for long, petrified and traumatized of what could happen to his family if he does.

It’s not like he’s stopped his wife and children from asking questions before, but most of the time, Chaeryeong and her older sister felt like they’re never ready for the truth yet - evident by how hurt Chanyeol always looked every single time the detectives come around. And they come around. . . a lot. 

Last time, if Chaeryeong remembered correctly, the detectives asked him about someone who in hindsight matched the personal descriptions the surviving Parks gave out, but since both uncle Sungjin and aunt Chaewon denied the fact that this person is one of their siblings, Chanyeol decided that he won’t even try and identify it. 

It was about her father’s oldest brother, Park Jaehyung, if Chaeryeong remembered correctly, and upon getting the news that the detectives were about to drop by to further question about Chanyeol’s older brother, he dropped everything he was doing to hide himself in his working room. It took almost five hours at  _ least  _ to get him out of there, and even though Chaeryeong was prohibited from looking at how his father was doing back then in fear of the memory haunting her for life, she did see him, and it broke her heart to a million pieces. Her father looked scared, almost as if he’s hiding from people who are out to do bad things to him, he looked as if he’s trying to protect himself - and Chaeryeong has always been on a defensive stance about this whole detectives-coming-to-their-house thing since then. Chanyeol has calmed down a lot since then, talking to his living siblings helped more than he thought it would’ve, but the memory snuck itself deep in Chaeryeong’s mind enough for her to be very much against this entire process.

Right now, they’re talking about skulls. Unidentified ones, buried under the Parks’ old house that were burnt to the ground in a fire that took the three other Park children’s lives, or so everyone thought. The skulls aren’t burnt, though, and it looks like they’re just buried there, making the investigators doubt if it’s actually the Park children’s bones since they were still alive and very much well before the fire, and couldn’t have been buried under there  _ while  _ the fires were set aflame. The remaining question was if they got buried there afterwards, and how no one acknowledges that someone might have come around the crime scene to bury a casket filled with unidentified bones. That left one thing and one thing only, the possibility that it was buried there  _ before  _ the house was burnt. But that would make the remaining living Parks as the supposed witness  _ and  _ criminal, but wouldn’t that just be evil? Would the investigators be unable to see how devastated this whole thing has made them throughout the years?

Chaeryeong tries to listen in closely, leaning in from her seat in the other room. Her older sister is numbly rolling the ball around their dog’s feet, and the little shuffling noises were enough to ground her back to reality.  _ What about the evidence that the kids were indeed kidnapped?  _ Chaeryeong thought to herself, her memories going back to that one journal entry where it looked almost as if her father scribbled the entire pages with his thoughts, and one in particular caught her eyes.  _ The truck was gone - but how could it be so quiet? _

The mumbling from the other room is too much for her to take, yet nothing is actually registering itself in her mind.

“Chaeyeon,” she stood up from her chair, shifting her sister’s focus towards her, “let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

  
  


.-.-.-.

  
  


Park Jaehyung was fourteen, his hair as shiny as the sun that was reflected on his jet-black locks. He’s older than Chanyeol by a few months, but it was only because of some poorly-developed technology their local midwife had in recognizing the fact that there were twins instead of one big, gigantic baby, though the two  _ did  _ end up as the tallest ones among their entire family. Nobody knew how Chanyeol managed to survive in the womb for almost three weeks without being noticed after Jaehyung came out of the womb, but he did, and he followed suit right after the midwifes found out that whatever was inside Mrs. Park’s womb was  _ not  _ a tumour. 

This fact made Chanyeol a fourteen-year-old, too, though most of the time Jaehyung gets cocky and tries to make the younger call him  _ hyung,  _ which results in nothing but a brawl the oldest ends up losing, since he might came out first, but he also - most of the time - gives in first. 

Park Sungjin, the thirteen-year-old, the one who came out approximately ten months after the twins, who ended Mr. Park’s reign of having only sons, was followed by Park Sooyoung,  _ three  _ whole years after. One year after Sooyoung was born, Park Chaeyoung came out, worried everyone who saw her since she’s the most quiet out of their entire family even though the Parks had a record of being very, very noisy babies - and Park Chaewon wrapped it all up, three more years after Chaeyoung was born.

Chanyeol more often than not describes his entire family as ‘noisy’, but he wouldn’t have them any other way. The first time he remembered the birth of his siblings was something he described in a flurry of colours and emotions, since he was only eight when their youngest was born and the previous ones were all an experience he was far too young to remember, but felt nonetheless. They’re always dressed in colourful baby suits, apparently, and that was what the flurry of colours was for him, and there was so much crying since there were so many babies and toddlers - and their mother was also crying, either it be the pain or the joy that follows.

Chanyeol saw Jaehyung carrying little Chaewon when they turned eleven, and it became a little sort of competition on which one of them could carry which sibling, which in return hurt Sungjin since he was the heaviest at the time and both older ones saw carrying him as an absolute win - but frankly enough, they couldn’t find a stable enough position, and Chanyeol ended up squishing Sungjin under him, and the younger ate a few blades of grass. . . and maybe dirt. He was laughing, though, so no one saw it as an emergency, until Sooyoung pointed out that Sungjin was bleeding from the nose, and all six of them got a very heavy-scolding. Yes, including three-year-old Chaewon, who was just there to sit in confusion.

Chanyeol had a friend who thought Sooyoung was cute, and of course, being the overly-protective brother he is - fought this friend. His name was Baekhyun, if he could remember correctly, and they were all in elementary back then, excluding Chaewon who was munching play-dohs in her kindergarten’s playground. This ended up in a fight with Chanyeol and Sooyoung instead, who thought that he was beating Baekhyun up because he disagreed. She screamed at him, a lot.

“Did you disagree?!” she had said, tears covering most of her plump cheeks while Jaehyung tries his best to hold her off from launching a kick onto Chanyeol’s black and blue face. “You beat your friend up because he called me cute, didn’t you?! Didn’t he?!” Sooyoung looked back at Jaehyung, who managed to neutralize his almost laughing face in the right exact time her eyes landed on his face. “Don’t drag me into this, Soo,” Jaehyung pats her head, mustering a courageous smile. “But he  _ did!”  _ Sooyoung exclaims, stomping the ground, crying even more. 

“Why would Yeol do that! He hates it so much when someone compliments me, see! See! He looks mad even now!” Sooyoung continues, ignoring how increasingly weirded out and worried Chaeyoung looks beside her, one hand extended to try and calm her sister down. “Sooyoung, you’re scaring Chaeyoung, stop it,” Chanyeol grimaces to continue grimacing once again, the pain on his swollen eyelids shooting through his entire system. “‘M not scared,” Chaeyoung deadpanned, looking bored, her voice muffled behind the slice of sandwich she bit into. Jaehyung tilted his head to ask for a bite. 

“Mdjsndksn. Jusndjdn hsd ho hedjsn,” Jaehyung spared Chanyeol a glance, his cheeks filled up with the sandwich he managed to convince Chaeyoung to share. “Huh?” Chanyeol huffs, beginning to get even more riled up. “I said,” Jaehyung flings one of his arms around Sooyoung’s shoulders, pulling her into a pseudo-headlock. Chanyeol shifts on his feet, trying to stop Jaehyung from doing so but second guessing since Sooyoung looks like she doesn’t really want Chanyeol to be around her right now. “Cut it out. We need to pick Chaewon and Sungjin up, just  _ apologize for now,”  _ Jaehyung whispers the last part, fixing his crooked glasses since Sooyoung was squirming around too much.

“I don’t want his apology!” Sooyoung shrieked, compelling Chaeyoung to take a few steps back, covering his ears, the little safari hat she had sitting on her head tilting to the side a little bit. Jaehyung hits his own head in misery. “He’s just so mean! I agree when people say my brothers are cute, you know?! I’m proud of it even,” Sooyoung huffs, her tears welling up as she stops squirming around, “but then someone gives me praises once in a while, and he’s always like that. He fights them until he’s beat up and turned into mush like that. You know? I get if you hate me that much, but it’s just  _ stupid  _ when you get yourself hurt when you fight someone just because you disagree with them, you know! It’s stupid!”

Jaehyung and Chanyeol shared a look, with the former giving him the dialogue he’s supposed to say to calm Sooyoung down with the telepathic power they didn’t even know they shared. It took Chanyeol a little too long, though, and this made Jaehyung frown, finally being dragged into it despite saying that he doesn’t want to be.

“Oh, I see how it is,” the oldest says, kneeling down, making sure to give Chanyeol one last ‘you better starve and buy me two times the lunch tomorrow’ look. “You think Yeol fought the guy who called you cute because he thinks you’re ugly, huh?” Jaehyung continues, not minding the uncomfortable shift Chanyeol is going through after he says that. Sooyoung nods, sobs getting a little harder to control. “But you hate seeing him hurt himself when he fights other people, too, is it?” he asks again, and this time, Sooyoung turned her back on Chanyeol, showing him that she’s  _ angered.  _ She huffs too, to answer the question Jaehyung asked her. 

“Oh no!” Jaehyung covers his eyes, acting as dramatic as he can, “it’s a big misunderstanding!” he uncovered one of his eyes to send a look at Chaeyoung, who is now sucking on a lollipop. The uninterested girl waddles to their side, kneeling beside the oldest, miming the exact same movement he’s doing before chiming in with a tiny, “O, no!”

The corners of Sooyoung’s lips twitched, but she struggled to hide it in her frown again. “What is?”

“Yeah, Chaeyoung, what is?” Jaehyung echoed the question to the tilted-head girl, who is losing interest at a rapid pace. Chaeyoung huffs before she nods her head towards Chanyeol and Sooyoung, frowning her eyebrows to make a point, and Jaehyung boops her nose, mumbling a little something about ‘we really need to make you talk a lot more’ before facing Sooyoung again. “What she meant was: Chanyeol fought the Baek-baek dude since he doesn’t want that guy to hurt your feelings, Soo! Since everyone in our. . . uh. . . circle of friends knows that Baek-baek is a, uh. . . a player,” Jaehyung nods with an awkward smile, affirming his own theories. Chanyeol grimaced at having to throw Baekhyun under the bus like this, since it really was his own mistake for getting  _ that  _ heated about her sister being called cute. He knew it was nothing nasty and Baekhyun probably meant it as ‘She looks so cute with her red ribbon and her bouncy bangs!’ not in a ‘I’d marry your sister when she grows up,’ but still. 

“He is?” Sooyoung asks, eyes widening. Jaehyung weighed his next words very carefully, choosing the fact that he’s already lied this much, might as well go all the way with it. “Hm,” he chose to hum instead, patting Sooyoung’s head softly. “So in a way, he was protecting you. See? He was so into the fight, too. His eyes are all puffed up. Even if he means bad - which he’s not - you’ll look better than he does, today. See,” Jaehyung points at Chanyeol’s swollen eyes and almost-cracked nose bridge before he nudges Sooyoung’s sides, making her giggle. 

“Okay, are we done crying, then?” he continues, wiping the almost-dried tear away from Sooyoung’s cheeks, the younger replying with a hesitant nod. “Hug it out,” Jaehyung orders, standing up to stretch his stressed-shoulders. 

Chanyeol watches as Sooyoung hesitantly approaches him, the bottom of her lip still jut out in a pseudo-pout as she gets closer and closer, finally plopping to his side in a hug after a few seconds. She mumbles something onto his outer coat, but Chanyeol was too busy focusing on the guilt at the time to notice how her tears will leave a print on his formal coat.

And then they were walking towards Sungjin and Chaewon, towering over Sooyoung and Chaeyoung while they cross the street and the red lights turn to green, letting Sooyoung hold Chaeyoung’s hand as they skip happily in front of their older siblings, problems totally forgotten. 

“Is it hard, though?” Chanyeol mumbled out, eyes still trained on the approaching gates of Sungjin and Chaewon’s school. “What is?” Jaehyung answers, hands busied with untying his ties and shoving them into his backpack. 

“Taking care of everyone. Cleaning up after their mistakes,” the younger among the two continued, not having the heart to look at Jaehyung’s eyes. “You never chose to be the oldest one. But you’re born into a world where you have to be, no matter how you wanted it to be,” he sighs, fingers curling around the pocket of ice they had bought in a convenient store only a little while after Sooyoung was coaxed to let go of Chanyeol. “No,” Jaehyung said in a voice only a decibel away from cracking, “everyone helps a lot. We all take care of each other, correct or incorrect?”

A silence settled between them when Sooyoung screeched her greetings to Sungjin and Chaewon, who were sitting under the roof of the bus stop.

“Incorrect,” Chanyeol retaliates, looking at his feet, “no one’s there to take care of you, but you take care of everyone nonetheless.”

Jaehyung said nothing to this, not when they were walking towards Sungjin and Chaewon, not while Sungjin looks at them with worried eyes - especially since Chanyeol looks like death - not even when they’re back at home, when Chanyeol went straight to their shared room to avoid his parents and their questioning neighbors. 

Chanyeol concludes that it  _ is  _ hard. Jaehyung is just too good of a person to say it out loud.

It was a few days after Jaehyung’s twelfth birthday party where Sungjin felt it. The shift in their usually warm-atmosphere-filled household. There’s something that is gnawing the back of his head, and it’s not just Chaewon who has learned how to make little paper balls and throwing them towards no one but Sungjin. They’re preparing to throw Chanyeol another surprise party, joking that they’re going to just use the same birthday cake for him and then reusing it too, for the rest of their birthdays, but something about it just doesn’t sit right.

Especially when he observes Jaehyung’s behaviour.

He looks like he zooms out a lot, sometimes there with the conversation’s flow and sometimes thinking about something way too hard that he focuses on an empty wall as if he’d break them from simply his gaze and his mind. 

There might be something to it that was related to that one time their father summoned Jaehyung to his working room, but Sungjin can never figure it out. Based on the look of it, neither can Chanyeol.

The older one is sitting across from Sungjin on the floor, leaning on the sofa from how hot that summer day is. They would’ve sat outside, waiting for the breeze to pass by while their entire brain gets more and more heated from the mathematics equation they’re supposed to finish while the rest of their family went out to help Mrs. Kang’s daughter in law when she got into labor, Jaehyung and their father tagging along in case they need someone to stay at home or drive out to get the doctor in case something goes wrong. But they were threatened to stay inside by a very agitated Jaehyung earlier that morning, and their parents agreed - though with a little more resolve in their eyes when compared to their oldest son.

Both Sungjin and Chanyeol had learned the hard way to never go against Jaehyung’s commands since he  _ knows  _ when they don’t do things exactly as he asked them to do, so Chanyeol advised them to go to the attic and open its windows, instead. The attic has four windows, and just in case they didn’t hear their family returning home and they lack the time to close the windows in godspeed and return to their living room, they opened the left window. It was a little more chilly up here, with the wind blowing every now and then and their eyelids drooping from relaxation.

That is, until the sound of a truck pulls up in their driveway. Sungjin is alarmed almost completely, shocking Chanyeol in the process too, as they slam their window shut as soon as possible. Something akin to dread settles in Sungjin’s guts, and apparently something tells Chanyeol that he should be feeling the same thing since there’s no sound of laughter and chattering that follows.

Sooyoung  _ never,  _ in her eight years of life, shuts her mouth. Never. 

“Could it be the neighbor’s car, instead?” Sungjin asks, feeling her voice vibrating slowly. Chanyeol looks at him dead in the eye, both of them on the edge of the attic’s opened door. “We’re the only one with a truck around here, Sungjin.”

Chanyeol’s few words pushed their feet to move downstairs as quietly as they could, waddling over to the second floor’s window that they were still covered in the blinds their mother forgot to unveil. Down there, a few feet away from where their truck is normally parked, another truck. A lot more rusty and rickety than their own, but the windows are tinted black except for the one little round spot where they’re supposed to be able to see from the rear view mirror. But there are the outlines of three manly figures Chanyeol made out to see, and he feels his heart dropping. The image of Jaehyung’s face returns to his mind, and he feels sick being here all alone. He’s not alone though, he realizes once he sees Sungjin’s worried face beside him, pupils shaking from fear and the worry for the unknown.

_ “Hyung,”  _ he croaks out, “we haven’t locked the doors.”

Chanyeol feels like he’s about to throw up, the bile forming in the back of his throat piling up at a worrying rate. His head replays all the times where his ass was saved by Jaehyung, who he refuses to call  _ hyung  _ most of the times, since they’re basically the same age. But by now, he wished Jaehyung was there with them.  _ But he can’t think of that right now. _

“We’ll lock it, then” Chanyeol forces a smile on his face, one of his hands curling around Sungjin’s, pulling the younger to follow him. They manage to get to the stairs before Sungjin croaks out a little, “What if they’re just looking for the wrong place,  _ hyung?” _

Chanyeol ruffles the younger’s hair, trying to make Sungjin lower his voice. “It’s okay,” Chanyeol replies, sitting the younger on the middle of the stairs, somewhere he’s sure won’t be seen from the outside but also is close enough to the living room for Sungjin to be able to see the situation. “I’ll be back before you know it. Try keeping it down, ‘kay, Jin?”

And then he crawls over to the living room, heart clenching impossibly tight when he hears the sound of a door slamming, extending his hyper-hearing to the fact that Sungjin gasped, followed by the younger clamping his own hands over his mouth in fear. Chanyeol thanked God over his long legs, since he reached the door in no time, prompting himself on his knees to take a peek outside. The door slamming was apparently one of the three men trying to come outside, but pulled back inside by the other two men in the truck, and they seem to be arguing about something, which gave Chanyeol the time to cover the windows that would reveal the inside of their house with their previously tied up blinds, praying that the men didn’t pay attention to details and notice the fact that someone had just closed the blinds. 

He rushes to lock  _ and block  _ two other doors before he reaches the back door and completely closes it off with a chair, a process that took about fifteen minutes on its own since he tries his best to not make any noises before he makes his way towards Sungjin, who is looking at him with wide, teary eyes. Chanyeol shoots him a smile, though he’s sure that beyond everything, he looks extra pale, accompanied by the bruises that are no longer swollen, but is still there. 

In the middle of his walk towards the stairs though, they knocked on the door. The knock was too hard, too strong, and too passionate for it to  _ not  _ shock Chanyeol all the way to his core, and he felt the pain of his heart jumping at a rate too fast that he fell on his knee. This prompted Sungjin to stand up, hands still covering his mouth, but his eyes widening in fear of how loud of a sound Chanyeol’s fall was about to make. Luckily for them, in the time it took for the knock to be over, Chanyeol blocked his fall by landing on the sofa, his figure freezing half-fall while leaning on the cushions, neck bent in an uncomfortable way while he looked backwards at the completely covered windows. The shadow was of a big, buffy man, a hat sitting calmly atop of his head. There were two others behind him, and Chanyeol stood up, almost as quickly as he fell, to walk towards the stairs. Their floors are made of concrete, and luckily, he didn’t have to think about the noises.

“H-h- ahem, hello?” one of them tries to speak, and Sungjin’s eyes shoot downwards in an attempt to not cry out of fear as he watches his brother walk towards him. “Please open up, kids,” they continued, and Chanyeol’s never been more afraid in his life. 

“We didn’t- we forgot the keys.”

At the sound of the other men muffling their snickers behind their hands, Chanyeol scooped his younger brother up in his arms to rush upstairs, once again thanking the gods that he doesn’t have to worry about the creaking noises being heard from the outside. Sungjin’s breath hitches in uncomfortable sobs while he tries to breathe after burying his head on Chanyeol’s shoulders, and the other made a point to grab the bat both he and Jaehyung stored in their room before climbing the attic, faster than he’s ever ran before, closing the door below them as quietly as he could manage. 

Chanyeol looks at Sungjin, his cheeks stained with tears, mirroring his own, and he hugs the younger once again, one of his arms still holding onto the door of the attic, just in case their house gets broken into and the last resort they have is his tight grip on the attic door until their family comes home. 

“It’s okay, Sungjin,” he whispers, trying to swallow his own spiking fear, “we’re okay.”

The house was dark and filled with nothingness when the rest of the family came back, but their neighbor was standing beside their yard, arms crossed with his wife and kids looking into the distance. At this display of worry, Jaehyung jumps out of the passenger’s seat to run towards their house, greeting their neighbors beforehand. They end up talking to Mr and Mrs Park, and Jaehyung pulls out his keys, not being able to help the feeling that something was wrong. Once his keys are able to open the door, he’s greeted with the mess Chanyeol had made in blocking every other door except for the front, and the complete darkness that enveloped the entire house. 

Sooyoung follows behind him, Chaeyoung and Chaewon by her side, as she tilts her head, confused. “Why’s it so dark? I thought you said they’re doing homework?”

Jaehyung looks back outside as the neighbor asks, “Your kids were home? How funny, we didn’t hear anything, though. The men were just suspicious, breaking into your house like a bunch of drunkards,” and the split second where his father’s worried eyes met his own, he drops all the self-control he has as he shouts for his younger brothers’ names.

“Chanyeol! Sungjin?!”

Sooyoung’s jaw dropped open, the bottom of her lips beginning to quiver in fear, the only thing helping her to not cry right then and there is the fact that both Chaeyoung and Chaewon are holding onto her as tight as they can, growing even tighter. So she watches as Jaehyung slams his palm onto the light switch, turning the light on before he runs here and there, opening every locked door before carrying his body upstairs, feeling lightheaded and as if he’s a few seconds away from completely losing it. 

Jaehyung feels like his heart is losing its ability to pump blood throughout his body right now, especially as he spots the ladder that is sitting right under the attic’s door, with Sooyoung peeking out from around the hallway, not daring to come closer to where Jaehyung was climbing up the stairs.

The oldest lets his nails scrape the door of the attic, trying to get it opened before a loud and shocking thud comes replying to him from behind the door. “GET THE FUCK AWAY! I HAVE BATS! YOU DON’T WANT TO GET HURT, YOU DON’T!” Chanyeol shouts, followed by a slightly hiccupy Sungjin saying the exact same thing, both beating at the attic’s floor with  _ something.  _ Jaehyung is a little too relieved, not noticing how he’s just standing there looking at the roof for a little too long until Sooyoung’s cries get louder and louder as she runs closer, Chaeyoung right behind her with a very upset face. 

“Papa!” Sooyoung half-cries half-whines, calling out for their father, and this stopped the noises coming from the attic, allowing Jaehyung to try again and pull the door down. He’s greeted with Chanyeol’s face, looking down on him with his bat outstretched, his entire body shaking, Sungjin right behind him, hiding with another bat.

“Papa! They’re up here!” Sooyoung continues, in the same exact timing where Chanyeol  _ drops  _ himself onto Jaehyung’s arms, which made the two stagger down to the floor in an uncomfortable fall, and Sungjin, not wanting to be left alone, climbs down at an amazing speed. 

_ “Hyung,”  _ Chanyeol breathes, sitting on his knees, frozen. “They came inside,  _ hyung.  _ I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry- they- I wasn’t able to protect Sungjin, I was so scared, I’m so sorry-” he whispers, eyes looking wide and traumatized while a crying Sungjin comes staggering over to hug the two, making Sooyoung and Chaewon join in, all of them in some level of tears. Jaehyung felt the freezing feeling that first dawned upon him thawing, little by little. He moves his hand and maneuvered them around everyone’s head, calming his breathing down, though it’s hard to do while he’s almost strangled by four other pairs of hands. “You’re okay, you’re doing great,” he says, not even noticing how much he’s stuttering.

“We’re okay.”

The next few days were calm enough to Chanyeol’s liking, too calm, in fact, that he finds himself walking down the stairs to his father and Sungjin, sitting in front of their television. The younger is nodding off, and everyone else is off to school, not going to return until another few hours. The thought of not being there with his siblings and letting them roam free on their own reminded Chanyeol of his own trauma, yet it would be unfair for Sungjin if they made him go to school this early on after they’ve just faced something so traumatizing since he’s the only one who went to another school simply because of the fact that Chaewon’s kindergarten fee over there is a lot cheaper, yet she still need someone to watch over her. 

“Papa,” Chanyeol sits beside his father, who raises an eyebrow at him, looking up from his newspaper. “Why were there debt collectors who broke into our house yesterday?”

Their father looks at him, a long silence passing by before he heaves a sigh, slightly startling Sungjin who was almost asleep. The old man passed his wife a fleeting stare, and their mother approached Sungjin immediately. “Sungjin,” she calls out, ruffling his hair to wake him up, “can you help me in the kitchen?”

The debt, apparently, was something that their previous ancestors had piled up from time to time, and as of now, they’re still haunting the Parks like an oblivious leech. Since, according to their father, there was no way the debt collectors still had an obvious proof that the Parks are actually indebted to them, all they have been doing was run away from their problem. Never in a million lives does he ever think that they would do something as extreme as trying to break into someone’s house, and since they usually only target the oldest sons from each generation, their father felt no need to tell everyone else but Jaehyung.

That last fact irked Chanyeol a little bit, since their oldest brother has always shouldered close to everything, and now he just  _ had  _ to have some other responsibilities on his shoulders. 

Isn’t that a little too much for one young boy to take?

It’s by this time Chanyeol feels something begin ticking in his heart, like a time-bomb, or maybe a little stopwatch, counting down to God knows when. He doesn’t know why it started, doesn’t know how to stop it either, and he just knows it’s coming. He knows this, but at the same time, he hates himself for being unable to stop the bad things that kept happening.

There was a dead rat that Chaeyoung find on the porch a few months after this, and the kindhearted poor kid buried it even though she’s dead scared of rats, and Jaehyung finds her crying over a small mountain of dirt with a flower on top, and although she was shaking to her boots and unable to utter the things in her mind completely, Jaehyung found out that it was a dead rat with a box filled with taunting messages after digging it out, a few hours after he puts Chaeyoung to bed. Chanyeol accompanied the older one everywhere, since he felt guilty, so naturally, he knows everything that is going on, too. 

The next time, it was their entire front porch, sketched with different kinds of inappropriate pictures and slurs that made their neighbours gather around in front of their house, some offering their help to repaint their entire wall. Jaehyung and their mother denied politely, making jokes about how much men and women power they have in that household, but one question stuck out like a sore thumb in Chanyeol’s eyes.

_ Is Mr. Park so powerless that he can’t do anything about this? I thought his mother’s family were a bunch of policemen, no? _

Which their mother would laugh politely over, not saying anything any further. But that was true, Chanyeol thought to himself. What was their father doing? Hiding in his room as if this is not technically his business too? Don’t get him wrong, Chanyeol wouldn’t be that much of an asshole that would automatically blame his father over everything they’re going through, but at least. . . play a part in this entire. . . fiasco, maybe? That would be nice.

The next time something smells fishy to Chanyeol - since his senses of if something is wrong or right sharpened ever since that one fateful day where everyone left him and Sungjin behind - was one day in the middle of June, after he and Jaehyung both finished their very much torturous weeks of exams. Their sisters still had a few more weeks of cramming until they were done, but they were granted a few hours of roaming around the city before their mother demands them to be at home, since June was the month of summer festivals and the road would literally  _ never  _ be empty, save for the ones leading up to their house, located on the edge of their little town. It was deemed safe enough by their mother, so the two fourteen-year-olds and the surplus of their pocket money decided that hanging out to eat ice creams isn't so bad.

Jaehyung folds his feet up to let Chaeyoung walk through, the younger usually opting to sit in the corner of every lunch table. “JinSung,” he calls out to Sungjin, who is in the middle of opening Sooyoung’s ice cream package and holding Chaewon straight enough so she doesn’t slip and fall down the chairs. The third child hums as a reply, still focused on distracting Sooyoung long enough so that he can open the plastic with his teeth. “How’s Junior High going for you? I heard the kids these days suffer a lot,” Jaehyung grins, feeding Chaeyoung a share of his ice cream since she’s helped him carry some stuff to the teacher’s room earlier, though she was dead scared of being talked to. 

“Oh shut up,” Chanyeol chuckles, blinking rapidly at the stream of wind passing by him, messing up his fringe, “if you’re interested in asking about Sungjin’s classmates, just spit it out.”

Jaehyung looks at the accuser, frowning, as if that’s going to help his case.

“Wha- no? Who did you get that information from?”

“Aaah, I see how it is,” Sungjin nudges the oldest’ knee from under the table, a smirk making its way on his face. “Who was she called? Uh. . . the one kid you looked at a whole lot during our first Flag Ceremony. I don’t really talk to her a lot, though,” he continues, and Chanyeol blows raspberries Jaehyung’s way. 

“I did- hey, what’s so wrong with wanting to ask my brother how’s his school-life doing?” Jaehyung retaliates, defending himself when he notices the fact that even Sooyoung is watching him, judgmentally. “Because you were on Sungjin’s shoes just a year ago. For your alibi to be convincing, you should’ve waited until  _ I  _ got to Junior High before asking how ‘things have changed,” Sooyoung chimes in, rolling her eyes before she digs into her ice cream further, mumbling about something, sounding pissed off. Both Chanyeol and Sungjin laughed at this, and Jaehyung tries his best to still look angry. 

“You’re doing - S’young’s face,” Chaeyoung pokes at Jaehyung’s cheeks, mimicking how he looks. Sooyoung, being mentioned in a sentence along with one of her brothers, quickly got defensive. “What do you mean by the Sooyoung face?!” she whines, and Chaeyoung clears her throat, altering her lips from pouting to a half smile, and then returning them to the pout until it looks like she’s malfunctioning from being unable to choose which expression to wear. “That,” she huffs, grinning when she feels their eyes on her.

“True,” Chanyeol shrugs his shoulders, and Jaehyung frowns for a moment only to recover at the speed of light. “Ha! You see that, Soo? You do the things  _ I  _ do, and since I’m older, it means you’re the one who follows me. Which also maybe or maybe not means you admire me more than you admit,” the oldest raises his eyebrows playfully, and this invites a pretend gag from Sooyoung’s side. 

Sungjin shared a judgemental look, looking at the watch on his wrists. 

“Alright, before we fight in a random cafeteria, let’s just go home,” he propels Chaewon on his front, making sure the youngest is holding on tight enough so she wouldn’t slip just in case the others started wanting to run a race or something when they get five feet away from home.

The walk home was relaxing, a refreshing change to how much life has been sucked out of them after the exam seasons. There are lanterns everywhere, hanging from one side to another, and more food stans with a calming yellowish hue of light along the streets. The wind blows strong enough to mess up their hair, but not enough to make them shiver from the cold. The moon is big on the sky, a few splatter of stars surrounding it like an art piece hanging all the way up there, and they feel like the ever so tight ribbon wrapped around their throats finally came loose, their lungs filled with air and the thought of nice things.

Park Chaeyoung has always had trouble with talking. Apparently, it’s not as if she doesn’t know words, since she’s helped Jaehyung write an entire essay about science, something she’s very much into - and they’ve conversate just fine with written words when they’re a little too bored or when something gets too overwhelming that she can not form a coherent enough sentence on her lips. She’s a very smart and observant young girl, but everyone aside from her siblings seem a little too overwhelming for her, and sometimes impatient. She finds it hard to talk to her parents, even, and it saddens her that sometimes they think as if she hates them, but she’ll try. She’ll try her best to improve, if given the time. She likes to think she’s improving.

And with her ability of talking growing slowly, her observation towards her surroundings grew impeccably, too. 

There’s something about the shift of air when you’re going through somewhere dangerous which stood out a little. . . a lot to her, and it’s been this way ever since she was a little toddler. No one else believed her, though. No one else but Jaehyung, as always.

Chaeyoung agreed for a few seconds, that the world looked calm that night. That the clouds are in the right type, and the shape was pretty, and the natural light that are accompanied by the light of summer festivals illuminating the streets were almost magical, and the supposedly calming feeling of clinging to one of his sibling’s arms are  _ still  _ there, and she’s not dreaming, and she’s not having a panic episode, and she’s still looking focusedly to the front, and-

_ Cold. _

What was that?

Chaeyoung stops dead on her track to look behind her, where the light of the summer festival ended a few blocks ago and now they’re only a few minutes away from their little house in the corner. Their neighbors’ house lights across from theirs are still on, and the kids are still riding their tiny bicycles around, watched by their mother, but there’s still an amount of dark, light-less roads among them and that, and they’re just walking so slow, and it feels scary, and-

“Bud,” Jaehyung’s voice approached her from behind, and Chaeyoung looks up to find the rest of them stopping, looking back at her aside from their oldest, who is now kneeling beside her. “What is it?”

He’s not trying to sound condescending, but Chaeyoung can’t help but feel bad that she’s inflicted the worry she’s supposed to bear on his own and spreads it out for everyone to feel. That’s the shittiest thing she’s allowed to do, but sometimes she feels like such an asshole. For being so scared all the time. And so shy. And timid. For being someone who needs everyone else’s hands to be able to progress onwards, and without them she’d just be crying alone, curled up in the dark, unable to move.

She huffs in a breath, looking up at Jaehyung with her hands motioning him to get up.

_ But it’s okay though,  _ she thinks to herself, the pace of her heartbeat quickening as she feels the cold feeling spreading out on the back of her neck once again.  _ It’s okay since they all have different things to be responsible for. _

_ “누군가 우리를보고있어,”  _ she whispers, feeling her the first child’s hands stiffening after the words came out of her mouth, clearly, without hitching or stopping in between. Only to be clear, she replays the words, looking right into Jaehyung’s eyes. “Someone’s watching us.”

The speed where Jaehyung picks her up by his shoulder and shoves everyone in front of him to  _ run  _ was making Chaeyoung’s eyes water, and by the corner of her eyes - since she was facing backwards - she could see that there’s a presence of someone, lurking underneath the trees, retracting from where they were positioned previously. In no time, they reached the porch of their house, Mrs neighbor greeting them cheerfully, only getting an equally cheerful reply from Sooyoung, who had no idea what happened, and Sungjin, who forced a smile wide enough to not terrify the neighbors and or their parents. 

Chaeyoung was still shaking as she closed the blinds by their front doors, and she’s shaking some more as she goes to sleep that night, heartbeat not allowing her to pass out as quickly as she wanted to.

The next school day was weird, at least for Chaeyoung. She doesn’t dare ask the rest of her sibling’s day, since she’s inflicted worry upon them that they blindly trust her so much without asking for further proof, but her older siblings thought that her silence was a way for her to cope with whatever the hell she saw last night. Unfortunately for the nine-year-old, the following morning’s trauma wasn’t worth forcing herself to get out of bed after the endless amounts of her neverending heartbeat the night before.

Chaeyoung’s seatmate is a girl named Mina, a sweet little girl who’s never been mean to her despite what the entire class thinks of her. Though the rest of her friends would never be as kind as Mina, which explains why usually Chaeyoung doesn’t have friends she could sit with during lunch aside from exam days which would allow Sooyoung to at least sit with her since she had no one to sit with, either. Which was weird, since their brothers had little to no problems about their infamous family name. They had friends like normal humans do. Maybe it’s a gender thing, Chaeyoung decided one day, still keeping it to herself.

But that day, after she noticed that she was stalked, only a few blocks away from the safe refuge of her own home, she experienced the worst schooling day of her life.

“Hello,” Mina greets Chaeyoung that one day, smiling to her as Chaeyoung smiles back, desperate to not be left alone. “Oh,” Mina says, stunned, “you’ve never smiled back at me before. Are you having a good day, today?” she continues.

“Hm,” Chaeyoung hums, pulling her seat closer towards the table, “Sorry.”

Mina is thoroughly stunned now, her jaw dropping open. This was possibly the first time Chaeyoung has ever replied to her aside from just nodding and laughing silently. “Hey, you have a pretty voice, you know? You should talk. . . a little more. If. . . you don’t mind. Sorry, that sounded a little insensitive, huh?” Mina chuckles to herself, not expecting Chaeyoung to further reply. “I have a little cousin named Chaeyoung too, you know. She’s almost as quiet as you are. Coincidence, do you think?”

“Mina!” an exclamation comes from the edge of the room. “Stop talking to the freak. You’d contaminate their disease. Don’t your parents tell you the Parks are off-limits?”

“Shut up, dude,” another kid chimes in from beside the first one, “Mina is an exchange student. Besides, she doesn’t  _ live  _ with her parents.”

“So should we tell her about the Parks, then?”

“Yeah! Listen Mina, here,” the gossiping kids walked right towards them, shoving Chaeyoung out of the way. “These people are off limits, supposedly. Their entire bloodline is cursed with something and none of them likes the Parks since they’re like. . . they bring bad luck or something. I heard that a few years ago someone broke into their house, or whatever, but even then the people who broke into their house were scared away. They have some kind of demons in that house, or something. Even thieves were scared of that family.”

_ No they’re not,  _ Chaeyoung thinks to herself,  _ the neighbor scared them away. They’re still stalking us from afar to this day. _

But she can’t say anything.

“Don’t say things like that, that’s not nice,” Mina frowns, one of her hands reaching out to shove one of the kids away, and they sneer at her. “It’s okay, Mina,” they chuckles, bitterness dripping from every word that they spew, “the freak herself knows it. Don’t you, you bitch?”

Chaeyoung and her siblings walk home while the sun is still in the sky, quietness enveloping each and every one of them. She wants to ask them about a lot of things. Maybe later? But she couldn’t voice it out during dinner, where her parents eyes would be watching. So when?

“J-Jae?” she whispers, and Jaehyung automatically leans down to listen to her almost inaudible voice. “Does everyone hate our family?”

Chanyeol had heard this, and his mind was rendered unable to proceed. Since then, the ticking in his entire soul has stopped, as if it was ticking towards that moment, waiting for the moment to arrive, the moment where they had to learn the ugly truth everyone has been keeping from them this whole time. 

Chanyeol dug around these past few days, looking for further information that would help him understand. It has been two years, and the overly-simplified answer his father gave him about their family being tangled in debt and nothing more irked his mind since two years ago, and everything he’s found has been everything but nice. Their great grandfather was caught as an arsonist, and he dated someone who worked at a gas station just to get free gasoline - something he would later use to burn people’s houses for fun. This had triggered a lot of revenge being thrown upon years and years of their generation, and the fact that their father decided to move away to start a clean new slate in life has told him more than he needed to know about how much pain was inflicted upon their families by the faults of everyone else who preceded their existence. It took the police about five years until they caught him, and he was sentenced to death. It was an interesting read, but Chanyeol finds himself unable to understand why people’s thirst for revenge preceded the years of their life, not putting aside the fact that the problem happened a long time ago. Maybe he was just too naive. Maybe he’d grown into understanding the need for revenge.  _ And he does. He really does. _

He just doesn’t understand how people are taking revenge on  _ their  _ family at this time, a time where Jaehyung exists, possibly one of the nicest people in this world you will ever meet - and you can call Chanyeol biased all you want, he’ll prove himself right.

He doesn’t understand why bad things always happen to good people, why they have to suffer.

Why we all have to suffer.

He awoke that night to a scent of smoke and the hurried hands of Jaehyung hitting his sides, trying to wake him up, panic written all across the oldest son’s face. “Fire! Get Sungjin and Chaewon downstairs, I’ll wake everyone else up! God’s sake, Chanyeol, hurry!”

A bunch of alarms are setting off in Chanyeol’s mind, and he does all he can to run outside after Jaehyung disappeared from his side, tripping a little bit as he was distracted of his older brother knocking on Sooyoung and Chaeyoung’s door, it being jammed a little since the water from their leaking room drenched it every now and then. Chanyeol hurries down the stairs, his mind filled with Sungjin and Chaewon, who sleeps like they’re literally dead, accompanied by the background sound of Jaehyung,  _ screaming at the top of his lungs.  _ And then something broke.

Chanyeol stops in the middle of the stairs, looking back and forth, his mind damning him for not being fast enough in making decisions. Jaehyung can take care of himself. He trusts Jaehyung, right? Right?

Maybe the door broke since he pushed it too much. Yeah. Sooyoung and Chaeyoung’s door.

Chanyeol bolts by then, since the wooden walls of the stairs are starting to catch on fire and he needs to run away from the stairs’ hallways fast enough for it to not fall on his head-

“Sungjin! Sungji-” Chanyeol slams the door open, his predictions being awfully correct since Sungjin is still sleeping on his side, a crying Chaewon screeching in his hold. Chanyeol drags the younger boy, letting his back hit the ground in hopes it would wake him up, and carries Chaewon in his arms. “Park Sungjin, fire!!”

This woke the third child up, his eyes suddenly turning wide with the realization and the sounds of Chaewon losing her voice from crying for over a minute. “Wha- where’s-” he stutters, but Chanyeol wastes no time in dragging him out with one of his empty hands. “Papa! Ma! Where are y-” the oldest between the three stops when he sees their parents’ bedroom vacant of a living creature, and he turns instead to the opened door of their kitchen. They got out just in time, since Chanyeol looked up at the opened(?) side window of the attic, and there’s literal fire bursting out of there, making the trio run as fast as they can away from the building, heading to the front of their house in tears.

“Jaehyung! We-”

Their parents and their neighbors were the only ones there. Mrs Park screeched, hysterical, her previously hopeful eyes melting into something akin to searing hot pain when she sees only three out of her six kids coming out alive, tarnished in ashes and burnt in a few places. “No, no no no no! NO! W-where- where are. . . where are your. . . where are the. . . NO!” she screams, kneeling on all fours on her way back to the house before it  _ exploded,  _ Mr Park and a few other men trying to hold her back from returning, Mr Kang busy on the phone with some firefighter company. 

“Ma, what are you-” Sungjin looks back and forth in between his parents and his siblings, frowning in denial. Deny it. Deny it. That’s the best thing you can do. 

“They’re not dead,” Chanyeol gently puts Chaewon beside Sungjin, untangling her hands when it returns to his side, grabbing him as tightly as the six-year-old is able to do.

“I won’t let them be dead.”

He had said that, running back inside before he was completely caught by two other men who aren’t his father, and the feeling returned. The feeling that the air was punched out of him, that he feels his heart falling to his stomach fast enough that it’s physically painful he wants to just curl in on himself and  _ cry.  _

Why? 

  
  


.-.-.-.

  
  


“Detective,” Chanyeol nods to the two men in front of him, tilting his head to the side to see his two daughters exiting the front door, the younger one lifting their dog high enough for him to see, wordlessly telling him that they’re taking their dog out for a walk. 

“Mister Park. You’re the one we head to see first, since whatever you say was always highly respected by your younger siblings, uhm,” one of the men speaks, the one that has been quiet this whole time. Chanyeol reads his name tag, looking as if he’s scanning Detective Yoon this whole time. He offers the detective a slight smile. “This one’s a new kid, huh, Kang?” he asks the other detective, and detective Kang smiles back at him, and their eyes met in the middle, bitter and nostalgic. “Yeah,” Kang Younghyun chuckles, “it  _ has  _ been that long, apparently. Yoon would probably take my place in a few years.”

“Based on my humble opinion, you’re still considered young enough to be useful, Kang,” Chanyeol smiles at him, the light in his eyes sincere. “Thank you, Park.”   
“Now,” Younghyun sits beside detective Yoon, offering the older Park the files he’s been compiling in his case. “We have reasons to believe that. . . your father has been hiding something. Yours truly lives across the street from you for more than twelve years after,” he points to himself, “and even when your old house was an interesting enough. . . attraction, for some people since, let me not sugarcoat it; a lot of people disliked your family’s ancestors, there were some questionable approaches, and in one occasion, I believe none other than Mister Park himself, your father; returned to the scene.”

Chanyeol lets his eyes cast down, hoping that he doesn’t already know whatever the detectives are going to say. 

He knows, and it hurts a lot more.

He knows how much pain he had to went through when he knows how much his father would rather hide every other interaction he had with the people who set fire to their house, knows how impossible it was for the rest of his siblings to die on the crime scene since their bones weren’t discovered, not even after a decade past and there were more advanced technologies that were brought in. 

He knows when they died. Knows that at the time they did, he didn’t have to further pretend that he’s visiting their gravestones just to pretend that he’s talking to them, knows that after that one fateful day, visiting their gravestones would actually mean something for him, since they  _ have  _ met their demise.

He felt it. 

He felt each pain and betrayal they felt. He felt how long they have been stretching on the last life lines they had left, felt how much they’ve wanted to give up but stopped themselves from giving in since there’s always  _ hope,  _ but then there was no more hope, and the darkness they thought they would always break away from finally consumed him. 

Chanyeol hoped that he would’ve been unable to feel them, but he did.

He knew that their father chose to give up on his children’s lives, as if their life or death was ever  _ his  _ choice. 

“Tell me, pa,” he had said once, in a family meeting where Sungjin and Chaewon left a long time ago after noticing the truth, “was there even any intention in there to save them? Did you ever even  _ try?” _

The old man had a stroke a few years before this, and he’s unable to do much, but he did point to his journal.

Chanyeol wished he would’ve never found the hidden ransom notes before the old man confessed, but he did.

Oh, how much he wished he didn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me @ my other social medias, (updated in 28/05/2020 since i'm too lazy to go through my works to find out where i updated my socials to change it)  
> IG: @/teayoinkstea or @/ryujinsdumbass  
> TWITTER: @/basekickswingin  
> tumblr: @/hongjoongsaurora or @/arrowthroughtheheartstuff


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